“Nathan, by the time I finish with the local vampire family, they will be the most polite group you have ever met.”
Nathan couldn’t stop the snort before it escaped his nose. Ah damn, he had been doing so well.
“Not finding that very likely, Mr. Lowell?”
Crap, thought Nathan, back his last name, again. “Let’s just say that my eight decades have provided a one-sided, no, make that a very singular experience when it comes to how vampires treat the other species.”
“Yeah, I have that impression already. How did Michael keep everyone in line?”
“Lots of pain and death.”
It was her turn to snort. “Well, I could go without the death. However, if you have to crack a few rotten eggs then maybe the rest of the carton will get the message. In fact, I’m counting on that happening. I think we will start with Petre and then check on Stephen.”
“Are you going alone?”
“Why, are you offering your services, Mr. Lowell?”
“I might be able to help with Petre’s children, but he is probably too much for me to handle.”
“Well, I’m not sure how much I need you for your physical prowess, Nathan. However, I will certainly need you for your cyber-security skills. Have you ever been on the dark web, Nathan?”
Well crap, he thought, she wasn’t fooled one bit.
“Yes, I’m familiar with it all. I was on the front-line of hacking and cracking with early modems and enjoyed it. That is how I started my consulting business. I might have a few old personas laying around.
Bethany Anne grinned suddenly. It was a nice grin, then she turned it feral. “Yes, in fact, I’d love to talk with ID10T-42, would you happen to know him?”
Nathan, who had made the mistake of getting comfortable talking with a vampire, realized he had been setup the whole time. How she knew one of his hacking personas was beyond him. She might be able to read his mind, for all he knew, he wasn’t sure exactly what a vampire could do, especially this one. “Yeah, yeah I guess I can get you in contact with him.”
“Good, good to know. I’ll need ‘him’ to get me all of the security information possible on Petre and his home and offices in order to figure out how and where to make my introduction. I’m not sure if I’m going for sneaky or up front, yet.”
“You know that the family doesn’t appreciate any killings of one of their own, right?”
“Nathan, I appreciate the warning, but the previous methods of instruction haven’t seemed to work. I’m going to implement a new instruction regimen and I fully expect to have a few conversations before the acceptance. If I go to Stephen first, it will seem like I need his approval. When I reprimand Petre it will send the right message.”
Oh, Nathan thought, it will send a message alright. He hoped that she wanted to send a message of ’this lady is suicidal’.
Nathan and Bethany Anne walked back to the clearing, making enough noise so that Alexi and Ecaterina could hear them approach.
Bethany Anne was good with going back early, her only concern had been Ecaterina’s health and she seemed just fine. With a proper guide, and the ability of three of them to easily see in the darkness, they were able to make good time.
Nathan had used his phone when he had a good connection to call Ivan and then let Ecaterina explain what they needed. He came to the pickup point in a white van without any passenger windows. Ivan and Alexi rode up front, leaving Ecaterina, Nathan and Bethany Anne hidden in the back in case anyone was still looking for them.
Nathan called Frank and left a coded message that he was ‘getting close’. Bethany Anne didn’t want any direct connection to Frank until after she took care of the Petre situation. One complication at a time.
Nathan figured his stuff back at the hotel was a write-off. Without the pack members coming back down from the mountain, he was sure that it would be watched. Bethany Anne considered going after it herself, but it would let the pack, and therefore Petre, know that she was back in town.
Ivan was able to get them into a basement which had a good internet connection. There were two couches, not so comfortable, and one bedroom and full bathroom for the four of them.
After about a day in the confined space, and the tension increasing pretty exponentially, Bethany Anne felt like slapping both of the guys. When she figured out that they were both worried about Bethany Anne going all vampy on Ecaterina’s neck, she had the first bought of uncontrolled laughter since waking up in the medical pod back on the mountain. Both guys at first just looked at each other perplexed until Bethany Anne was able to explain that she didn’t need blood to survive daily. Their first introduction to her ripping heads off and sucking blood from the necks was related to the fight and the expending of energy.
Resting around the room was a net gain for her, so no need to stress out and feel all needful of protecting Ecaterina.
For her sake, Ecaterina thought it a little childish for the men to go all ‘protectionist’ of her. She had been handling her own protection out on the mountains for almost all of her twenty-four years and suddenly she had these two guys suffocating her.
Ecaterina was asking Bethany Anne all about what she did before she came to Europe and Bethany Anne shared about her work in the CIA and then, without naming names, her work in her former agency.
Nathan came through on the second morning with some plans for a nice little two story, with basement, a little outside the city situated on its own land. There were some notes about extra security in place, but the only thing that Nathan could confirm were some bills paid to a local security installation company fourteen months before.
They talked it over and it was decided that Alexi and Ecaterina would go and take a look at the house. They had the best woodcraft. Nathan would be excellent in the woods, but he didn’t know the common ways to look for traps. The Brasov pack would know if they scented another wolf that he wasn’t part of their pack. Alexi was a known local and while they might be concerned, at least he lived in the area.
Ecaterina going out like this didn’t sit too well with Nathan, but he was a big enough boy to know when to keep his mouth shut on the subject.
To keep Nathan busy, Bethany Anne had him researching more about Stephen’s area and to see if he could find any bank account information on Petre. They say, always trace the money to find out what is important in a man’s life.
Well, it worked when she was tracking the dirt on politicians, anyway.
Brasov, Romania
The four of them got back together when Alexi and Ecaterina arrived later in the evening. They didn’t want to chance Petre getting involved and their best guess was he would be up at night. Sitting on the two couches, they went over the results from their reconnaissance around Petre’s house.
It seems they found a few regular traps and then hit the electronic versions. Petre was pretty well protected from anything coming through the woods.
“Damn.” Bethany Anne seemed a little annoyed that Petre would make this more difficult for her. “I don’t know enough about this guy to decide if I can just walk up and slap him around, or if he has enough muscle on the property to make life difficult.”
Nathan piped in, “Have you considered the Bravos pack?”
“No, not really. They are in the back of my mind, but unless they can all jump me at the same time I should be able to fight my way clear of them.” Bethany Anne went quiet for a minute.
Nathan considered her comment. If she could take on that many at one time, just how strong was she already? If a child of Michael’s had become this powerful in less than a year, just how strong was Stephen?
“What if, beyond your ability have Stephen see reason, he decides that you have to pay for Petre? I still don’t like that you aren’t just taking the problem up with him.” Nathan wasn’t too happy with going outside the normal channels. He didn’t know what Michael would do with Bethany Anne going around the normal protocols he knew about, and felt obligated to continue to enc
ourage Bethany Anne to consider changing her plan.
Bethany Anne considered his comment, for the fourth time at least. She respected that he came from a culture where this was, literally, a life or death decision for them and his encouragement was based in that culture.
“No, I’m not going to affect change by following the old rules. Every vampire, due to Michael’s influence, only understands power at the end of the day. Essentially, Michael’s power. Michael and I talked about this on the trip over here. It was very rare that an attack would happen on American soil because Michael would get involved if Bill couldn’t take care of the issue. So, whoever out there is making this happen, they are confident in their ability to take on Michael and his families.
“I’ve considered this for a while. I think the forsaken have become empowered with a new way to attack. Apparently, from the footage and what Michael knows about a situation in World War II, there is a method to use bodies to create a form of zombie nosferatu. They are intelligent enough to handle fairly complicated instructions and they really don’t have a will of their own. The ones in the explosion that killed Bill didn’t hesitate to blow themselves up.”
Nathan considered what Bethany Anne had just shared. “If they are nosferatu, then that pretty much makes them forsaken, right? None of Michael’s children allow a changed person to live if they don’t make it past that stage.”
“Unless we have another child or set of children that have decided to break from Michael, then yes. I asked Michael why they just didn’t bomb his residence back in America and he said that while possible, it would have been difficult for them to do anything permanent to him. There are enough video cameras in town they would have been given a better chance of backtracking evidence to someone. Plus, vampires never sleep where they don’t have a bolt hole.”
Ecaterina spoke up for the first time since they had explained what they had found at Petre’s house. “What is bolt hole? I don’t understand this word.”
Nathan jumped in, “It means a way out, a second, or third, way for him to leave the house, usually underground and comes up far away.”
“So, if we find this bolt hole, he will come out from there if his house is attacked?”
Bethany Anne took this question, “Yes. I could go through his house and if he got concerned before I could get to him, he could slip away and then I would have a bigger problem on my hands.”
“So, this bolt hole is probably outside protected area. Uncle and I go and try to find exit and close it, if possible.”
Bethany Anne considered that thought, she noticed Nathan grimacing a little that he didn’t like the idea much.
“OK, here is what we can do. I need you and your uncle to go back and see if you can find any exits. They will be very hard to find. If you can find one, we will probably do this, if you can find two, then I feel better than fifty-fifty we can contain Petre. I can get into the house during the day when he is probably sleeping. Even if he tries to flee, he will have the sun to deal with so he would prefer to either get out with a closed van, or something similar or hide in the house until the sun goes down.
I will need a reason to be there, I don’t think that they will allow me to just walk up and if I do something vampy it will certainly cause me to lose my element of surprise.”
Just then, she noticed Nathan leaning towards her and sniffing in her direction. She just raised an eyebrow at him.
“You don’t smell like a vampire. I just realized that. I knew you were a vampire back when you first came into the bushes, but you don’t have that…” He noticed her giving him a glare that just dared him to continue that sentence. “You don’t smell like a vampire, it’s all I’m trying to say.”
She was about to give Nathan a small tongue lashing when she noticed Alexi leaning towards her surreptitiously from beside Ecaterina. “What the hell is wrong with you two?”
Alexi answered her, leaning back with a shrug, “It’s how we know someone is a vampire if they aren’t being, what did you call it? Yeah, ‘vampy’. All vampires have a smell, like old blood, yes?”
Bethany Anne scrunched her nose up, “I heard about that, but haven’t smelled a vampire since getting the olfactory upgrade, so I don’t know myself. If you two have had enough smelling, you’re making me want to take another bath.” She got up and started pacing between the two couches, dictating how she wanted the effort to go. They broke the meeting up and the two trackers took a bath and went to bed. They would be getting up early to be in position when dawn broke to be looking around. They carried a cell phone to text in when they had found anything.
That next morning, right after Ecaterina and Alexi had left a little earlier to meet Ivan at one of his many equipment stashes, Nathan and Bethany Anne discussed how he would approach the house with Bethany Anne as a ‘prisoner’. They had decided to blame Alexi for the pack deaths. The story was that Nathan wanted to trade his life for Bethany Anne. Since she was the new chosen child, she should be worth it, right? Smelling human, that should get her in the door.
At first, Nathan got a little righteous on his own honor. He would never trade a woman for his own life. Bethany Anne felt a little smile at the fact that she was becoming a person to Nathan again, not just something to be feared.
She was able to get out of him that he also didn’t like the fact that when word got around that he didn’t play straight up, it wouldn’t go well for him in future negotiations. She pointed out that he was a hacker, among other things and she didn’t believe he had a lily-white reputation.
He pointed out that he wasn’t his hacker personas and that no one knew those ‘highly intelligent workers for freedom of information’ were him, anyway.
She shut him up by exclaiming the dead wouldn’t talk, or be concerned about what people said about them.
After only the small, obligatory grumbling from Nathan, they prepared and then got into their vehicle. They were going to only get within about three miles from his house and walk the rest of the way. They didn’t want to have their vehicle tracked. Petre’s house was on a small road, anyway.
They were waiting in the car a little before 9:00 AM, when they got the first text that Ecaterina had found an entrance. They were still looking.
Bethany Anne didn’t like how easy it was for the first exit to be found. Nathan championed her abilities, it was why he paid so much for her skills.
Bethany Anne had already gotten the story from Ivan, so she knew how Nathan had been suckered into paying for the trip in advance. While she let his comment go without correcting him, she thought it cute he was trying to pump up Ecaterina’s abilities. She was pretty sure that Nathan was shooting for Ecaterina to be on the team when they left Brasov.
A little after noon, she got a text that they had found a separate and much better hidden exit. Alexi had changed to his bear form and went smelling around until he had a musty smell and of all things, French fries coming out of a large set of bushes. It was agreed that Alexi would stay as a bear and push against the metal door at the bottom of some poorly poured concrete stairs under the bushes. Petre would be strong, but it was incredibly unlikely he would be able to move Alexi.
Alexi had sent Ecaterina to watch the other exit.
It was time.
Nathan and Bethany Anne got out of the car, Nathan taking a couple of plastic ties and after walking a little way down the path until he found what he was looking for, turned to look over at Bethany Anne. “You sure you’re able to handle your anger? I don’t want to get suddenly dead doing what you told me to do.”
Bethany Anne smiled at the comment. “Yeah, I’m good. I won’t feel a thing. Are you OK throwing down a defenseless woman?”
Nathan took Bethany Anne and grabbed her arms and held them behind her back and zipped the ties in place. “I am absolutely NOT OK with hurting a defensive woman. In fact, it goes against my masculinity.”
Grinning behind her back, Nathan used his substantial strength and pushed Bethany Anne so hard s
he flew into the thorny bushes rolling ass over appetite getting her clothes, face, hands and pants tore up until she suddenly stopped with a crack against a tree. He heard her voice coming from about twenty-five feet away from the road, “You son-of-a-bitch! I am defenseless here!”
Nathan smiled wide, “But Bethany Anne, you’re not a woman!”
A few minutes later, after Nathan figured it was safe enough to get close to Bethany Anne again, he was pleased with how messed up she looked. Plant parts, a small branch and leaves were still in her hair and she had dirt and scratches over her eyes and cheeks.
The look of death she gave him was just the right touch. He figured she looked just like a human that was pissed, but not in a position to do anything about it.
His life was complete or as complete as it would get until they made it past this operation. It was a shame he wouldn’t ever be able to share the story of shoving a vampire into a tree without living to regret it.
Death Becomes Her (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 1) Page 21